


Fly No More

by MusicalLuna



Series: Feathers [1]
Category: Iron Man (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Wings, Amputation, Body Horror, Gen, Hurt No Comfort, Hurt Tony Stark, I did it twice because I wasn't mean enough the first time, Medical Horror, Medical Torture, Non-Consensual Body Modification, This is Basically Just a Wingfic Version of Tony in the Cave, Torture, Two Versions Actually, Wingfic, Wings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-30
Updated: 2015-08-30
Packaged: 2018-10-24 12:57:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,961
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10742166
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MusicalLuna/pseuds/MusicalLuna
Summary: Tony wakes up on his belly.He’s in pain. Pain painpaineverywhere, all over, his chest burning and his shoulders stabbing. It’s dark, smells like blood and metal and damp.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Forlorn Kumquat (sara_wolfe)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sara_wolfe/gifts), [nightwalker](https://archiveofourown.org/users/nightwalker/gifts).



> i would just like to remind you that you asked for this

Tony wakes up on his belly.

He’s in pain. Pain pain _pain_ everywhere, all over, his chest burning and his shoulders stabbing. It’s dark, smells like blood and metal and damp.

Everything is unstable around him even as he lies there, perfectly still, like he’s had too much to drink. Where _is_ he? What the hell happened?

It’s hard to tell what’s more unbearable—the agonizing weight in his chest, or the needle-like sharpness lancing into his shoulders. Something’s wrong with his wings, Tony realizes, and remembers the blast. God, how bad had it been, he’d bled but he hadn’t felt damage to his wings. What if—what if he can't—

Pressing up onto his elbows is excruciating, the pain in his shoulders multiplying and redoubling until he can feel nothing else.

Tony can hear his own rough, wet breaths. Terror crawls up his spine, stabbing like tiny pins along his back. Grimy bandages cover his chest. It doesn’t feel right, something’s wrong, he doesn’t _feel right_.

Tony claws the bandages open, chest starting to heave with each breath as they come away, nausea roiling at the back of his throat. He makes a desperate, horrified noise when the last strip of gauze falls free, revealing the hunk of metal embedded in his chest. There are wires attached to it. With a frantic, trembling hand, he follows them over the edge of the gurney.

And chokes when his fingers find the old, grimy battery at the other end.

It’s hooked into his _chest_.

Doesn’t explain the pain in his back.

Dread wells up in him, thick and cloying at the back of his throat. He doesn’t want to know, doesn’t want to confirm what his body’s telling him, but he takes a ragged breath and, with a shaking hand, reaches back to touch his wings.

There’s nothing there.

“No no no no,” he breathes, tears thickening his voice. He sweeps his hand back and forth, gropes for his wings. It’s not until he touches his back, gasping as pressure on the bandages sends blinding, white hot pain up into his skull, that he feels them, the tiny stubs.

Tony screams.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WELP. apparently my brain really likes this idea. sorry this is more tony angst. maybe cuddling next time??

“What the hell did you do to me?” Tony croaks, fingers clenching around the wires trailing from his chest.

Yinsen is calm, matter-of-fact. “What I did is to save your life. That is an electromagnet, hooked up to a car battery. I removed as much shrapnel from your chest as I could, but there are still some pieces left. I’ve seen plenty of injuries like that. In my village we call those casualties ‘the walking dead,’ because they take about a week to reach your heart.”

Tony feels his mouth tremble.

~ * ~

“How long have I been here?”

“Two months,” Yinsen replies. “I tried to keep you unconscious as long as possible to permit you to heal. They became impatient.”

“Yeah, I bet,” Tony mutters, his wings fluttering in agitation. He feels tender all over, wings smarting at the slightest movement. He’s missing maybe half his feathers, but they’re still whole. They’ll still function when the feathers grow back eventually.

Assuming he gets out of here alive anyway.

~ * ~

Their captor’s approach is signaled by a bunch of shouting in a language Tony doesn’t understand and his heart starts to beat hard against the battery in his chest, painful and uncomfortable. A second later, a crowd of men with guns come storming through the doors. “Come on, stand up,” one of them barks. “Stand up!”

Tony does as he’s told, Yinsen moving to his side, hands up. “Just do as I do,” he murmurs, expression still aggravatingly serene.

“Come on, put your hands up,” the man barks and Tony glances at Yinsen, does as he’s ordered. Then he gets a good look at the weapons the men are carrying.

“Those are my guns. How did they get my guns?”

Yinsen gives him a terse look. “Do you understand me? Do as I do.”

One of the men, bald, swaggers out ahead of the others, spreading his hands. He begins speaking and Yinsen translates in a low voice out of the corner of his mouth. “Welcome, Tony Stark, the most famous mass murderer in the history of America. He is honored. He wants you to build the missile. The Jericho missile that you demonstrated.” The bald guy hands a picture to Yinsen, who turns it so Tony can see. “This one.”

Tony’s heart feels like it’s going to beat the electromagnet right out of his chest. He straightens a little, looks Baldy in the eye, and says, “I refuse.”

~ * ~

They shove him face down on the gurney, a hand on either shoulder and two more holding his wings near the joints, twisting them painfully. It’s terrifying, how vulnerable he feels.

Baldy crouches next to the gurney to look him in the eye and Tony stares back at him, trying to manage his shuddering breaths.

Baldy speaks.

“You are going to build the missile,” Yinsen translates, voice soft. “You will build it or—” The English gives way to whatever it is the rest of them are speaking, and Tony may not understand what’s being said, but he can hear the agitation in Yinsen’s voice.

Baldy twists away to glower at him, barks something in return.

Yinsen yells something back, then slips into English: “It will _kill_ him. He is not yet healed, do you understand it will kill him!”

Tony’s heart crawls into his throat. _What_ will kill him?

Baldy stands up and growls something at Yinsen, low and threatening. After a beat, Yinsen says, resigned, “You will build it or you will never fly again.”

Tony doesn’t understand at first. How are they going to stop him from flying?

Then he hears the sound of a blade being drawn and he _gets_ it.

Panic surges through him and he writhes, tries to slip free. His captors start yelling, then there are hands all over him, pinning him down, pressing down so hard he feels the pinch in his heart and he makes a breathless noise of pain, terror thrumming through him.

He can’t move a single inch of his body when Baldy crouches next to him again, eyes black and hard.

“Will you build the missile?” Yinsen asks.

Tony stares at Baldy, fear unlike anything he’s ever felt singing through his system, blotting out everything but the urge to get out. He’s breathing hard, gasping for every breath.

He can’t build the missile. He _can’t_. These are the wrongest of hands they could end up in and with the Jericho…

He clenches his jaw, trying to steady himself. He can…he can fix what they're—what they’ll do. Yinsen will keep him alive and if he’s alive, he can fix it.

“No,” he breathes.

~ * ~

A high, thready noise slips out of Tony’s throat when they yank the feathers back from around the base joint of his wing and set the blade against it. Part of him wants to yell, _okay, okay I’ll do it_ , but he bites down on his lips.

“Last chance, Mr. Stark,” Yinsen says, voice flat and quiet.

“No,” he croaks.

He screams, arching away from the blinding flare of pain as the blade slices into the joint. The last thing he hears before he passes out is a horrible popping.

~ * ~

He’s on his stomach when he wakes up.

“Nice job,” he rasps when he sees Yinsen. “I’m not dead.”

Yinsen rubs a hand down his face. “Yes, amazingly enough. I do not know that you will be so lucky if you refuse again.”

Tony’s stomach shivers and he realizes, gently patting at his shoulder, that his right wing is still intact. He goes cold. “They didn’t…they didn’t do both.”

Yinsen sighs and looks at him. “Of course they didn’t. Why waste the leverage?”

“I passed out,” Tony says, even as his lips tremble, his vision blurring. “It wasn’t so bad. I can—”

The door slams open and Tony flinches, fingers digging into the edges of the gurney. Someone barks a question and, reluctantly, Yinsen nods.

This time, Tony doesn’t wait for the question. He doesn’t want to wait, dreading it.

“I’m not building you the fucking missile,” he spits.

They cut his other wing.

~ * ~

He’s shaky and weak when he wakes again, head spinning.

“Lie still,” Yinsen urges. “You’ve lost a lot of blood.”

Tony’s back is burning, bolts of red-hot pain feeding into his spine, across his shoulders. It’s enough to blot out the constant ache of the electromagnet in his chest.

“You are a stubborn man, Tony,” Yinsen says, and Tony’s eyes flutter shut as he dabs at his forehead with a damp cloth.

“Yeah,” he breathes, voice wavering, “it’s gotten me into some tight spots.” He feels strange, almost weightless without his wings and it makes him feel unmoored. Thinking about it, about the fact that he’ll never feel the wind in his feathers again, maybe never fly again, fills him with a choking despair, so he doesn’t.

“You should do as they say,” Yinsen urges.

“I’m not going to help them kill innocent people.”

“They’ll keep torturing you.”

Tony’s throat works convulsively. “I know.”

~ * ~

The water is even worse than losing his wings.

At least he’d passed out pretty quick once they put the blade to him. Being in the water seems to last forever, his lungs burning and aching, and he’s petrified that one of these times they’ll dunk him and he’ll be electrocuted. So many ways to die, so little time.

They pull him up for the third or fourth time, sobbing and choking on rank, stale water and Baldy grips him by the hair, jerks his head back.

“Now?” Yinsen says.

“F-fuck you.”

Baldy snarls and shoves him right back down into the basin. He’d barely gotten a chance to breathe, so Tony’s vision starts to go black around the edges right away. _This is it,_ Tony thinks, _this is where I check out. If I had time I could replace this damn thing in my chest with something better. An arc reactor would do nicely._

His lungs seize and then he’s taking a breath in, water flooding into his mouth, filling his airway. It’s an awful, raw kind of agony.

He’s barely aware of being dragged back out of the water.

When he’s puked up all the water, coughed until his lungs are on fire, Baldy takes him by the front of his shirt and pulls him up. He hisses the question again and Tony doesn’t even need Yinsen’s translation at this point.

“Yes,” he says, voice giving out on him. “I’ll do it.”

Baldy grins triumphantly.

~ * ~

They haul him and Yinsen out of the cave and Tony blinks in the sunlight. It feels like years since he saw it last and it hurts, feels like pins in his eyes. He needs Yinsen’s support to walk, balance totally out of whack without his wings.

“He wants to know what you think,” Yinsen says when they stop in front of a series of tents, each filled with Stark Industries weaponry.

“I think you got a lot of my weapons.”

“He says they have everything you need to build the Jericho missile.”

_And maybe something else_ , Tony thinks, looking around at it all.

“He wants you to make a list of materials. He says for you to start working immediately, and when you’re done, he will set you free.”

Tony glances at Yinsen, smiling blandly. “No, he won’t.”

Yinsen smiles back and agrees, “No, he won’t.”

~ * ~

Two weeks later, Tony flies again, sort of.

It’s more like, semi-controlled, accelerated falling, but it gives him hope.

He’s out, he’s alive, and he’ll be damned if he’ll let this be the thing that grounds him.


End file.
